I saw this article and was appalled
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-mead ... 43208.html

Sterns is a moron. The National Park Service costs only 3 billion of the budget and selling our parks and monuments wouldn't generate much money in the long term, especially when the problems in the budget are social security, medicare, medicaid, and defense. Romeny and Santourm sound crazy on the subject too talking about selling off public land. How could you even think about selling our national parks? So should Gettysburg and the Grand Canyon become theme parks? And other sites like one I worked at Cowpens National Battlefield would become condos. This is another reason I would never vote for most republicans because of comments like these.

Seems 30 F22 Jets for 3 national parks sounds like a good exchange for the Reps. I am sure China will buy the parks.

Most republicans care more about defense than our Parks. Hell Paul Ryan's plan would hurt the Park Service and many would have to close for parts of the year. As someone whose livelihood is tied into the Park Service I get scared and worried and mad.

I am strongly against selling of parks and especially historic battlefields.

Such places are to be preserved and well respected.

Unless somebody crazy like Paul gets in power, I think they are safe from being sold off. Right now, I am worried about funding cuts which could put me out of a job.

I think its time your country has a grown up discussion about the debt though...

Really the US has no choice but to bring in an austerity program with increased taxes. The debt is a serious issue with real long term effects.

There is no way that raising taxes will solve the problem. Also frankly people say Austerity is bad as it leads to reduce govt spending. How does raising taxes not hurt the economy?

The problem is the debt growth is much higher then the growth of the economy and that is a dangerous path.

First goal is to reduce the rate of debt increase below economic growth levels. That at least makes debt manageable.

Frankly, in Canada we have a debt problem and the govt released an austerity budget by mainly going after public sector workers. Sure its sad they must go but frankly if some people are not needed we should not hire them. I do not think its fair to increase deficits and raise taxes just to keep some people employed.
Here in Canada they even raised the age to receive some retirement benefits from 65 to 67 and that is because of a chance that there will not be enough to pay such benefits in the future.

The rest of the world has seen that tough medicine is needed, but politicians and even the people in the US just cannot see how big of hole they are in.

However, cutting Park Service funding won't solve the problem. It is a small part of the budget. If you want to fix the budget you need to go after SS, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense. Those 4 things make up 75% of the budget. I think the SS age needs to be raised and people making over 250k should be exempt from ever getting SS. The same with medicaid, rich people should be banned from getting funds. We also need to cut defense. Their is no need to continue building tanks and planes when there is no threat of a war where we will need them.

I agree, small cuts in small departments only works for countries in a situation like Canada.

Imo the US defense budget should be scaled back but enough to ensure continuing dominance. I would caution the over zealousness to smash the military budget. Sure we live in a modern world, but once a superpower loses military dominance... its the end really..

Most important is reforms to social aid and medicare. I think for example people making a lot of money in retirement should not get such services. Its not because I am a socialists, it just does not make any sense. Why should the govt give money to people who already are well off in retirement.

I work in Financial field and Frankly ask any Financial planner...
They say that Govt pensions are gravy money for their clients...


However an across the board reduction even in small departments can lead to a lot of savings.

Anyone arguing against austerity is living in denial. The tax hikes required would hurt the economy far more then cutting spending.

Here is more of this crap from republicans this time Arizona
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/ ... 0R20120424

First, the bill is unconstitutional. The Federal government has the powers to own land, especially with states in the west because of the Louisiana Purchase and the treaty with Mexico after the Mexican War. But this is stupid because the state would just screw up the land and it is nonsense to think the government shouldn't administer this land for the protection of the people. This is just again republicans posturing and using the issue for their own political motives.

Putting aside the constitutionality argument, why do you think that the federal government would manage the land any better than the states? Federal environmental laws would still apply. These are not national parks, they are just vast tracts of land that are undeveloped with many states having expanding populations that need more area to live on and more resources to support such population increases.

Do you think states like Maine, New York, Tennessee, North Carolina, Vermont, and New Hampshire somehow are less well managed or beautiful because the federal government does not own vast tracts of land in these states?

I actually like the idea of the states selling the land with the majority of the proceeds going to the feds. Good way to raise money and decrease property management costs.

It almost reminds me of old school homesteading

The NPS and others have done a better job with handling their sites because first they have more funding. Look at many states closing their state parks. I don't think California would be able to manage Yosemite considering the crappy job they have done with many of their state parks. And you think it would be a good idea for the states to sell off National Park land to the highest bidder?

Not all federal land is national park land. I was not advocating the selling of national parks.

Ok that is fair, I was speaking more to the Arizona law. They are including National monuments which are part of the National Parks. The vast majority of the national parks are either National monuments or historic sites, most people don't even know that (not directing this at you more general public).

Well I agree that the US govt needs to cut but I am totally against selling National Parks and Monuments and Battlefield sites.

I am against giving up federal forests, and other federal land as well. Those place provide money and jobs for the local economy, and besides most of the places are in the middle of nowhere where no one wants to live. The govt. has done a pretty good job managing this land for over a hundred years so why should that change. These laws are stupid because they are pretty much unconstitutional. Groups like the Sierra Club and others would sue even if Romney was president.